Two suns in 2012?

[Little Texan]

Here's some weird, wild shit that may happen next year.

Link (http://news.oneindia.in/2011/01/19/earthmay-witness-twin-suns-if-betelgeuse-star-in-orionnebu-aid0121.html)

Earth may witness twin suns if Betelgeuse star in Orion nebula explodes
Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 19:00 [IST]

Melbourne, Jan 19 (ANI): The Earth could have a second sun lighting up the sky, if only for a matter of weeks, should the infamous red super-giant star Betelgeuse in Orion's nebula explode.


Dr Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland said Betelgeuse, the second biggest star in the universe, is losing mass, a typical indication that a gravitation collapse is occurring, and when that happens, we'll get our second sun.


"This old star is running out of fuel in its centre," News.com.au quoted Dr Carter as saying.

"This fuel keeps Betelgeuse shining and supported. When this fuel runs out the star will literally collapse in upon itself and it will do so very quickly," he revealed.

When this happens a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun.

"This is the final hurrah for the star," Dr Carter said.

"It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we'll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all," he explained.

Some experts have speculated Betelgeuse's explosion may cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole approximately 1300 light years from Earth, but Dr Carter says it could go either way.

"There's a reasonably even chance of a neutron star or a black hole. If it were me, I'd suspect it would more likely become a black hole at 20 solar masses," he added. (ANI)

[Little Texan]

Here's my question: If this star is 1300 light years away from Earth, doesn't that mean that this event has already happened and we are just now going to be witnessing it?

[Etienne]

Here's my question: If this star is 1300 light years away from Earth, doesn't that mean that this event has already happened and we are just now going to be witnessing it?

Visually from earth we're just now going to be witnessing it... IMHO...

[Etienne]

The lightwaves from there need/needed 1300 light years to catch our eyes...

[Little Texan]

They are talking like the star is exploding next year, but if it is 1300 light years away from Earth, that means the star is so far away that it takes 1300 years for the light from it to reach us, which means that the event actually took place 1300 years ago.

[chefcraig]

Here's my question: If this star is 1300 light years away from Earth, doesn't that mean that this event has already happened and we are just now going to be witnessing it?

"Betelgeuse is several hundred light years away, so if it were to light up the sky in 2012 it would have exploded in the Middle Ages..."

Dying Star Betelgeuse Won't Explode in 2012, Experts Say

FOX News (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/21/betelgeuse-explode-scientists-say/) (Yeah, I get all of my science news from fuckin' Fox. :duh: )
The super-giant red star Betelgeuse in Orion’s nebula is predicted to cataclysmically explode, and the impending supernova may even reach Earth -- someday.

But will it happen by 2012, as recent news reports suggest? Probably not, experts told FoxNews.com. While the second biggest star in the universe is strangely losing mass -- and has already become a red giant, meaning it is destined to explode and become a supernova -- there's no reason to believe that it will happen anytime soon.

"The story is pretty 'Hollywoody,'" said New Jersey Institute of Technology professor Philip R. Goode. In reality, the stars eventual explosion is inevitable, but no one knows when it will happen, he explained -- 2012 is pure conjecture.

"Betelgeuse is a red supergiant and should supernova at some time. When? Who knows?" he told FoxNews.com.

Phil Plait, an astronomer who writes for Discovery News, agrees that someday, Betelgeuse will go gangbusters. But it’s way too far away to hurt us, he explained. "A supernova has to be no farther than about 25 light years away to be able to fry us with light or anything else, and Betelgeuse is 25 times that distance," Plait wrote on his blog The Bad Astronomer.

The story was fueled by Australian news site News.com.au -- also owned by FoxNews.com parent company News Corp. -- which predicted that a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun, and suggested the event was imminent. And the gist of the story is accurate: Betelgeuse will blow, in an explosion that will be visible from Earth, though it won't be so bright as to appear like a "second sun."

“This old star is running out of fuel in its center,” Carter told News.com.au. “This fuel keeps Betelgeuse shining and supported. When this fuel runs out the star will literally collapse in upon itself and it will do so very quickly.”

“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up -- we’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

When Betelgeuse does blow, it will definitely be visible, Goode confirmed.

"One could roughly expect it to be as bright as a full moon and gradually fade away over a few months. Everyone on Earth would notice and be talking about it," he told FoxNews.com. Goode also noted that, due to the time required for light from the star to reach Earth, the event would be old history by the time we could see it.

"Betelgeuse is several hundred light years away, so if it were to light up the sky in 2012 it would have exploded in the Middle Ages," he said.

The news reports of Betelgeuse's imminent demise are nevertheless fueling Internet rumors and doomsday theories by confounding the impending supernova with the Mayan calendar’s end in 2012 -- which some believe is a prediction of the end of the world.

But again, there's no reason to think Betelgeuse will blow in 2012, Plait explains -- or even this millennium.

"It’s hard to know just when a star will explode when you’re on the outside. Betelgeuse might go up tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. We’re just not sure," Plait explained.

Goode agreed. "If you want to bet on it, it's better to try the lottery," he said.

[Little Texan]

Oh well, it would've been a cool thing to see.

[Little Texan]

Will the star reappear if you shout it's name three times? :biggrin:

[Seshmeister]

They are talking like the star is exploding next year, but if it is 1300 light years away from Earth, that means the star is so far away that it takes 1300 years for the light from it to reach us, which means that the event actually took place 1300 years ago.

Yup that is exactly correct.

[kwame k]

Will the star reappear if you shout it's name three times? :biggrin:

Shit........didn't read Craig's post above!

[Nitro Express]

I like to ride my snowmobile way out at night and look at the stars. That will fuck up my telescope hobby because Orion is out in the winter night time sky.

[Seshmeister]

I would love if this happened in my lifetime but if I had to choose one or the other I would go for the lottery win.

The confusion in the original article is from a journalist failing to understand the phrase that 'Betelgeuse is due to go supernova any time now' (or at least any time 1300 years ago), was in cosmic terms where 100 000 years is the blink of an eye.

It's funny that Fox of all people went to Phil Plait because he is exactly the best person to check with for this kind of thing. :)

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day...

[fryingdutchman]

Michael Keaton is going to explode????

http://i795.photobucket.com/albums/yy239/thangavealoo/MichaelKeatonBeetlejuice.jpg

[knuckleboner]

Yup that is exactly correct.

sort of. as far as the light waves, themselves, are concerned, the shit just blew...

[Seshmeister]

Bad Astronomy


Betelgeuse and 2012



http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/21/betelgeuse-and-2012/

Phil Plait


I swear, I need to trust my instincts. As soon as I saw the article on the news.com.au site desperately trying to link Betelgeuse going supernova with the nonsense about the Mayans and 2012, my gut reaction was to write about it.

But no, I figured a minute later, this story would blow over. So to speak.

I should’ve known: instead of going away, it gets picked up by that bastion of antiscience, The Huffington Post.
Grrrr.

The actual science in the original article is pretty good; they talked with scientist Brad Carter who discusses the scenario of Betelgeuse going supernova. The whole story is pretty interesting — I wrote about it in detail the last time there was nonsense about Betelgeuse blowing up — but in a nutshell Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in Orion with about 20 times the mass of the Sun, and it’s very near the end of its life. When stars this massive die, they explode as supernovae. The distance to Betelgeuse is unclear (it has a very puffy outer atmosphere which makes distance determination somewhat dicey) but it’s something like a bit more than 600 light years, way way too far away to hurt us.


It’s the question of when that the two articles go off the rails. Betelgeuse may explode tomorrow night, or it may not go kerblooie until the year 100,000 A.D. We don’t know. But given that huge range, the odds of it blowing up next year are pretty slim. And clearly, the original article was really trying to tie in the 2012 date to this, even when it has nothing to do with anything. The tie-in was a rickety link to scuttlebutt on the web about it, but that’s about it.

What’s worse, the HuffPo article attributes the date to Dr. Carter himself, but in the original article he never says anything about it; the connection is all made by the article author. Given how popular HuffPo is, I imagine a lot of people will now think an actual scientist is saying Betelgeuse will blow up in 2012.

OK then, tell you what: I’m an actual scientist, and I would give the odds of Betelgeuse going supernova in 2012 at all — let alone close to December, the supposed doomsdate — as many thousands to one against. It’s not impossible, it’s just really really really really really really really unlikely.
Really.

[UPDATE: CNN, Time, and other sites have picked up on this as well, mostly just repeating what was said in HuffPo. Fox News got it right, quoting me from my earlier Betelgeuse article, but I had to laugh: they got my blog name and host wrong, and the link they put up for me goes to my friend Ian O'Neill's article!]

I’m glad that both articles are clear that there is no danger from the star if and when it explodes. It’s simply too far away to do us any physical harm; a supernova would have to be within 25 light years or so before it would start to do measurable damage to Earth, and it would have to be much closer before that harm rose to the level of actual danger.


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2010/06/hst_betelgeuse.jpg





At 600+ light years, a supernova would be pretty bright, but hardly bright enough to be a second Sun, as both article say. Sorry, no Tatooine-like sunsets for us. It wouldn’t even be as bright as the full Moon, really, but certainly far brighter than Venus. Enough to cast a shadow, which would actually be pretty cool.
And even better would be the science! Oh my, a close supernova like that would be a huge boon to astronomy. The ones we see are all so far away that details are too small to detect, but one that close would be like having it under the microscope*. We’d learn a huge amount. The funny thing is, it would be so bright astronomers would have a hard time using their best equipment, which would get swamped with all that light. I wonder how many amateur astronomers would suddenly find themselves able to do science the professionals couldn’t…

And of course, the best thing of all in having Betelgeuse explode is that it would bring billions of people outside and looking up. Betelgeuse is in a part of the sky that makes it visible everywhere on Earth but pretty much the south pole. Far from being a harbinger of doomsday, it might actually be the single greatest benefit to astronomy that’s happened in hundreds of years.

Take that, Mayan apocalypse fearmongers!